1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to server virtualizations in general, and in particular to distributed virtual switches. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method for providing location independent dynamic port mirroring on distributed virtual switches.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally speaking, server virtualization describes a software abstraction that separates a physical resource and its use from the underlying physical machine. Most physical resources, such as processors, storage devices, and network adaptors, can be abstracted and provisioned as virtualized entities.
Virtual machines (VMs) play a central role in server virtualization. A VM is a virtualization of a physical machine and its hardware components. A VM typically includes a virtual processor, a virtual system memory, and various virtual devices. A single physical machine can host multiple VMs. Guest operating systems can be executed on VMs and function as though executing on actual hardware of a physical machine.
A hypervisor or virtual machine manager provides an interface between VMs and the underlying hardware of a physical machine. By multiplexing all accesses to the underlying hardware among various VMs, a hypervisor guarantees various VM the usage of the actual hardware, such as processors, system memory, etc., of the physical machine.
A typical server virtualization implementation generally requires multiple VMs to share a network adapter or network interface card (NIC) of a physical machine for performing external network input/output operations. A hypervisor typically provides a virtual switch (vswitch) that provides interconnectivity among the VMs on the physical machine. With each VM having one or more virtual NICs (vNICs), the vswitch interfaces between the NIC of the physical machine and the vNICs of the associated VMs. In general, each vNIC operates like a physical NIC, being assigned a media access control (MAC) address that is typically different from that of the physical NIC. The vswitch performs the routing of packets between the various vNICs and the physical NIC.
The present disclosure provides an improved method for providing port mirroring on distributed vswitches.